| Volume 5, Number 2, April 2008 |
Michał Boym:
Polish Jesuit in the Service of the Ming Dynasty
by Monika Miazek 莫妮卡 |
The Northern Land Route Achieved Twice in
the Era of Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty
by 陈东风、童哓峰 Chen Dongfeng &
Tong Xiaofeng
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Michał Piotr Boym (1612-1659), a Jesuit, missionary and scholar, came from a family in which noble and bourgeois, scientific and mercantile, travel and religious traditions curiously intertwined. The Boym family came to Poland from Hungary with the King Stephen Bathory. The Jesuit's grandfather, Jerzy Boym, even held the title of royal secretary. The Boym family amassed a considerable fortune and was considered to be a part of the Lvov patriciate. The family's position was strengthened by Paweł Jerzy Boym, the missionary's father, town councillor and mayor, as well as a merchant maintaining contact with France and Italy, Doctor of Philosophy and Medical Sciences of the University of Padua, honoured with title of court doctor to the Polish King Sigismund III Vasa.
Paweł Boym's offspring was numerous—six sons and one daughter. Michał Piotr was the third son in a row. His upbringing and personality were definitely influenced by the Renaissance spirit present in the family. Innate predispositions for natural sciences and mathematics pointed him to medicine...
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The Northern Land Route
The history of communication between East and West can be traced to the eastward missionary history of Catholicism. The communication between East and West appeared to fan out around Middle Asia in the Mongolian era when European aristocrats had an audience with the eastern sovereign by the northern land route, because they stood in fear of the Mongolian cavalry. During the thirteenth century and mid-fourteenth century the relationship between East and West actually referred to the relationship between Europe and Mongolia, then sovereign in East Asia. After the mid-fourteenth century the northern land route went from China to Europe via Mongolia and Russia, but it did not actually exist during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). After the Ming Dynasty the Manchu nation dominated China for approximately three centuries (1644-1911). The northern land route went from China to Russia to Europe when Russia expanded eastward and connected the northern land route previously separated by Mongolia. In the era of navigation, after the seventeenth...
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| Issue 5.2 |
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Elections
in Russian Society
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